Big Trial | Philadelphia Trial Blog

 

By Ralph Cipriano

On the surface, it appeared to be a puzzling judicial flip-flop.

On Aug. 29th, Common Pleas Court Judge Sierra Thomas Street granted George Bochetto’s emergency motion for a temporary injunction to halt SEPTA’s second planned phase of “Doomsday” cuts of 25% in service, plus a 21 1/2% rate hike that was supposed to kick in Sept. 1st.

“Everything must stop,” the judge, pictured above, said about the second phase of the Doomsday cuts. “That is the Court's order.”

But last Thursday, when she ruled again against SEPTA making cuts in service, the judge changed her mind about the fare hike, writing, “This order does not apply to the fare increase.”

On Sept. 1, SEPTA had planned to raise its base fare to $2.90, which would have tied New York’s MTA as the highest public transit fare in the country.

Last week, in the judge’s courtroom, Jody Holton, SEPTA’s chief planning and strategy officer, testified that the rate hike was supposed to generate an extra $571,000 a week in new revenues for SEPTA, facing a budget shortfall of $213 million.

Over a year, an extra $571,000 a week in revenues would amount to $26.7 million.

And if the judge had stuck to her position of eliminating the rate hike, Holton testified, SEPTA would have had to refund to riders $1.25 million for advance tickets containing the fare hike that were already sold to commuters.

But on the negative side, Holton testified, it would cost SEPTA $303,000 a week to restore just the Phase 1 Doomsday cuts, or $15.7 million a year.

To George Bochetto, the judge’s reversal on the fare hike made sense.

“She [the judge] was always saying how can you take away services and raise the fares,” Bochetto said.

So after she ordered SEPTA to restore services eliminated during two phases of “Doomsday” cuts, Bochetto said, the judge seemed to be “OK with the fare hikes.”

Here are the SEPTA service cuts that the judge ordered restored:

On Aug. 24th, the day before Philadelphia students were scheduled to return to class, SEPTA cut its service 20%, by eliminating 32 bus routes, shortening 16 other routes, and reducing service on 88 remaining bus and train lines.

The second round of cuts, which would have amounted to a further 25% cut in service, called for eliminating five Regional Rail lines and 18 bus routes, along with the Broad-Ridge Spur.

In January, SEPTA also planned to impose a 9 p.m. curfew on all remaining Metro and Regional Rail services, but the judge ordered SEPTA not to impose that curfew.

“I think she did a great job,” Bochetto said. “She controlled the courtroom and she gave SEPTA every possible opportunity to present their case.”

But since there was no there there, SEPTA lost three times.

In court, Bochetto showed that while SEPTA was pleading poverty, the transit authority was sitting on a “service stabilization fund” that varied between $300 million and $500 million.

In court, Bochetto also showed how SEPTA’s own research documented that their Doomsday service cuts were going to have a disproportionate impact on the poor, and minorities.

I reached out to Andrew Busch, SEPTA’s spokesperson, and Matthew Glazer, SEPTA’s lawyer, to ask if SEPTA planned to appeal the judge’s ruling, but neither responded to requests for comment.

Sounds like a couple of sore losers to me. But Busch told the Inquirer that SEPTA hadn’t decided whether to appeal.

“We’re evaluating our legal options,” Busch told the Inquirer, but he said that the agency planned to comply with the judge’s order.

Busch also said that SEPTA hasn’t set a date yet for when it would restore service cuts, or for that matter, raise fares.

That meant that SEPTA officials apparently were still struggling to understand the meaning of the word “immediately” that was stated twice in the judge’s order.

As in SEPTA shall “immediately cease and desist” all ongoing cuts in service, layoffs and furloughs.

And SEPTA “shall immediately reverse all Service Cuts.”

And so, as the great SEPTA crisis came to an end, the citizens of Philadelphia were treated to the spectacle of George Bochetto, a private lawyer, going into court to do something that the mayor and the city solicitor should have done.

On this blog, I have repeatedly explained how, when John Street was mayor, in 2004, and 2007, the city twice went to court to seek an injunction to stop SEPTA from cutting services and raising fares.

Both times, Mark Zecca, a former senior attorney in the Law Department, was the lawyer who prevailed in court, on behalf of the city, and SEPTA riders everywhere.

Both times, longtime consumer advocate Lance Haver was the lead plaintiff in each case against SEPTA.

This time around, Haver was the lead plaintiff once again, but it was Bochetto who went to court on behalf of the citizens.

While the mayor and the city solicitor sat on their hands, and were content to let the governor and the state legislature continue to play politics with peoples’ lives in Harrisburg.

“I think it’s very disappointing that they’re putting their politics with Harrisburg above the interests of the people,” Bochetto said about top city officials.

The mayor and the city solicitor, Bochetto said, should have filed this lawsuit. And the City Council should have gotten behind it.

“It’s a huge disservice to the citizens of Philadelphia that the mayor and the City Council didn’t lift a finger,” Bochetto said. “I am just absolutely aghast that they sat this one out.”

“They abdicated their authority to do something in favor of playing political games with Harrisburg,” Bochetto said. “And the people of Philadelphia suffered for it, and continue to suffer for it.”

During the SEPTA Doomsday cuts, Bochetto said, students and teachers couldn’t get to school on time. Workers couldn’t get to their jobs. Doctors, nurses and patients couldn’t get to doctor’s offices, or hospitals.

“Nobody was spared by SEPTA’s shenanigans,” Bochetto said.

When I asked Joe Grace, Mayor Parker’s mute spokesperson, why the mayor sat this one out, Grace, as usual, was hiding under his desk, and did not respond to a request for comment.

Neither did city Solicitor Renee Garcia.

City Council President Kenyatta Johnson declined comment on why he didn’t throw his support behind the SEPTA lawsuit.

Perhaps all of these high-paid officials should donate a portion of their big salaries to the law firm of Bochetto & Lentz, for doing their jobs.

Even though the City Council president chose to sit this one out, during two days of hearings, Kenyatta Johnson had members of his staff monitoring what was happening in Judge Thomas Street’s courtroom.

When I asked one of Johnson’s staff members why the City Council president wasn’t getting behind the lawsuit, he replied that there was a lot of politics going on.

Indeed, while the SEPTA crisis was unfolding, The Philadelphia Inquirer, which can always be counted on to carry water for Democrats, had a trio of reporters cranking out a story that explained how Democrats planned to exploit the SEPTA Doomsday cuts in the 2026 midterms.

The plan was to blame Republicans for the SEPTA cuts, so that Democrats could take back the state Senate.

And as always, rather than hold these Democratic officials accountable, the Inquirer played along.

While SEPTA was whacking services, and Democratic city and state officials were busy playing politics, Bochetto was thankful that Judge Thomas Street “had the courage” to see through SEPTA’s shenanigans, and “do something about it.”

And why did Bochetto wind up doing a job that the mayor and city solicitor should have done?

“Because George Bochetto cannot be bought,” he said. “Or paid for. Or corrupted. Or influenced. Or disregarded.”